Dr. WEI FENG

My research is focused on heart development and cardiovascular diseases, especially congenital heart defects and dilated cardiomyopathy. I got my Ph.D. in Cell Biology in the year 2019 from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS), during which time my research was focused on the mechanisms underlying heart failure syndrome induced by hyperglycemia. After that, I became a postdoctoral associate at the University of Pittsburgh, where I am now using state-of-the-art techniques such as single-cell mRNA sequencing and cardiac organoid system to understand human heart development and model several specific types of congenital heart defects. Through the past several years of scientific research training, I have uncovered a new potential therapeutic gene target to treat diabetic cardiomyopathy and established an advanced pipeline to model congenital heart defects by a combination of somatic reprogramming, heart organoid system, single-cell mRNA sequencing as well as machine learning methods. My long-term goal is to understand the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying congenital heart defects and inherited cardiomyopathy.